Published

Response from City Road Communications about the High Court ruling against Capital Alternatives

A little less than two hours after REDD-Monitor’s post yesterday about the Financial Conduct Authority’s High Court win against Capital Alternatives, I received an email from Paul Quade of City Road Communications, a public relations firm in London.

Quade was concerned that I hadn’t contacted Capital Alternatives for a comment. He didn’t seem concerned that I also hadn’t contacted any of the other 15 defendants, or anyone at the FCA. But I guess none of them are paying him to provide public relations services.

Quade also seems worried that I didn’t mention that Andrew Penman works at The Mirror. In his hurry, Quade seems to have overlooked the fact that I provided a link to the article that Penman wrote (in The Mirror). Oh well. I’ve inserted the words “at The Mirror” into yesterday’s post. But why Capital Alternatives would pay a public relations firm to pick up that sort of detail is beyond me. Purely coincidentally, Paul Quade worked for the Mirror Group Newspapers in the 1980s.

Quade points out that the Judge did not use the word “fraud” in his ruling. Neither did I in my twoposts about Capital Alternatives, except when I quoted from African Land’s website. This post also wouldn’t have mentioned fraud, had Quade not brought it up. I wonder why Quade and Capital Alternatives keep talking about fraud?

Quade sent me a copy of the 112-page draft ruling from the High Court and cherry picked four pages of it “for a fairer and more balanced report of the case”. I’ve not uploaded this document, because there’s a notice at the top of it explaining that “This draft is confidential to the parties and their legal representatives”.

(The case reference is HC13F02624. I’d suggest that anyone wanting this or any other court documents should apply to the High Court.)

Now here’s the funny thing. In addition to being a director of City Road Communications, since November 2013, Paul Quade has also been the director of a company called Rough Diamond Trading Ltd. Here’s the company website – nothing suspicious there, of course, it’s just the website of a company trying to sell diamonds to retail investors:

Another of Paul Quade’s companies is Omni Earth Ltd. As far as I can tell, the company hasn’t got a website yet, just a Facebook page (so far with only one “like”). More interesting is one of the other directors of the company. Step forward, Kenneth Scott.

In April 2013, someone calling themselves “Gearld” left a comment on The Mirror‘s website, following an article by Andrew Penman about African Land.

Gearld explains that he had first invested with a company called Room to Invest. (Directors of this company include several of the defendants in the FCA High Court case – Richard Henstock, Renwick Haddow and Marcia Hargous). Then he had “switched” his investment to a Brazil carbon project, and then to African Land. Now Capital Alternatives had phoned him asking him to pay more and switch his investment from African Land to a palm oil project. He asked whether the palm oil project was a scam. “This is beginning to sound like a Ponzi scheme,” he wrote.

And then it gets really interesting:

A month ago i had some one from a company called crest commodities called me trying to sell me palm oil, i never registered with them which is a bit strange how they had my details. Are they too part of this scam owned by renwick haddow and marcia hargous.

At this point, I think it’s relevant to point out that the FCA case against Capital Alternatives and the other 15 defendants was that they were running unauthorised collective investment schemes. It’s also relevant to quote, once again, Judge Nicolas Strauss QC’s ruling in the High Court:

“I declare that all the schemes under consideration are, and have been since their inception, collective investment schemes within the meaning of Financial Services and Markets Act.”

Here’s Quade’s email, followed by the statement from Capital Alternatives that Quade asked REDD-Monitor to post. I’ve googled several excerpts from Capital Alternatives’ statement, but couldn’t find it anywhere on the internet. I’m looking forward to Quade telling me which “other press have had the courtesy to print” this nonsense.

Interesting that apart from quoting from African Land’s website your journalist did not have the courtesy to contact Capital Alternatives for a comment.

Equally you make no mention of the fact that Andrew Penman works or did work for the Daily Mirror. Furthermore in no part of his judgement did the on Judge use the word “fraud”.

I’m attaching a statement from Ca[ital Alternatives which other press have had the courtesy to print. I am hoping as a serious online publication that you will do the same. I’m also attaching the full judgement and you may care to look at pages 22 where the judge dismisses a prosecution witness as “unreliable” and pages 41,42,43 for a fairer and more balanced report of the case.

Regards

Paul Quade

—
Paul Quade
CityRoad Communications

Statement in response to the High Court Ruling

“The FCA only won this preliminary issue trial only on the basis of a narrow legal interpretation of the FSMA. The FCA lost on every significant issue of fact. The Learned Judge, Mr Nicholas Strauss QC, had no hesitation in granting our application for permission to appeal. The hearing before the Court of Appeal will likely take place later this year. The Judge also looks set to compensate the defendants (by exercising his discretion in relation to legal costs) for the unfortunate way in which the FCA conducted both the case and the prior investigation.

The FCA’s conduct of this matter has, in our view, been deeply disappointing and wholly unbecoming of a public body. Despite having never visited the farm in Africa or the rainforests in Brazil or Australia, and despite having never interviewed Mr McKendrick, the FCA believed these products and investments to be a sham from the outset. They have no doubt been motivated, or cajoled into action, by a small minority group of disgruntled investors. The judgment gives no credence whatsoever to such claims. On the contrary, the products and the places they enrich (i.e. the developed world) have been shown to be absolutely genuine. One particular investor, Ms Botto, gave evidence at the trial to confirm the positive work that AL and CAL have done and the good returns that she has received.

Marcia Hargous and Robert McKendrick were found to be truthful straightforward witnesses. Some of the FCA’s witnesses were not credited with the same praise.
Technical highlights from the judgment:

a. The Court accepted there was force in the criticisms that the FCA had no evidence to support the allegation that the farming on Yoni Farm was a pretence. Over 3 years the FCA had not been to Yoni Farm and had not interviewed Mr McKendrick (paragraph 55).

b. There was an “unfortunate hiatus of about 15 months between June 2011 and September 2012 in which the FCA had insufficient resources to pursue its investigations so leaving the future of an operating farm in doubt over for an unnecessarily long period” (paragraph 55).

c. The Court rejected Mr McFarlane’s evidence and was satisfied that the position is “as African Land states” (paragraph 56).

d. The Court rejected Mr Thorp’s view that pooling arises where there is no separate sale of the rice (paragraph 58).

e. The Court rejected the FCA’s case that there was pooling as there were standard deductions for milling and general expenses (paragraph 59).

f. The Court rejected the FCA’s case that there was no individual allocation of income at Yoni Farm (paragraph 96). The Court had “no hesitation” in accepting Mr McKendrick’s account on the issue (paagraph 111).

g. The Court rejected the FCA’s case that the money paid by the investors was also part of the property within the meaning of section 235(3)(b) (paragraph 158).

h. The Court rejected the FCA’s case that there was pooling on the basis there were standard deductions for expenses (paragraph 162).

i. The Court accepted that the guidance given by the perimeter guidance team (to the effect that if income is paid to investors from their separate property that is enough to take a scheme outside both section 235(3) (a) and 3(b)) and upon which the Defendants relied was inconsistent with the FCA’s argument in the litigation (paragraph 193).

j. The Court accepted Mr McNee’s evidence that ACCUs were to be attributable to individual plots (paragraph 251).

k. The Court rejected the FCA’s submission that the award of the total number of ACCUs attributable to the forest area meant that profits were pooled (paragraph 256).

l. The Court rejected the FCA’s submission that section 235(3) (a) was satisfied because refunds could only be made out of the proceeds of contributions (paragraph 257).

m. The Court rejected the FCA’s submission that in relation to the CCC schemes in Brazil and Sierra Leone it was the intention of Ms Hargous (or any of D1-D8) to share the VCU’s rateably between investors (paragraph 270).”

Published

14 Comments

The story goes on.
As an investor in various Capital Alternatives schemes and now sounds like I was fed a lot of horses dung, it would be nice if Capital Alternatives handed out a working contact that works or with a person so as to let the investors know where our investments are, be it in the directors fat accounts (allowing them to contact us to sell African Lumber or Diamonds)or are the certificates issued by Capital Alternatives do actually mean something apart from a piece of quality paper with words.

After many weeks of trying to contact Capital Alternatives regarding my 9000.00 Pounds Sterling in the Australian Reforestation project, I noted that Mr. Paul Quade of City Road Communications act for Capital Alternatives as their public relations company. I therefore Emailed Mr Quade and asked him if he could advise me of a contact telephone number &/or email address that Capital Alternatives would actually answer. That was three weeks ago, and, you’ve guessed it, I’ve had no reply. Surprise, surprise.

Amazing, if you look athttp://capitalalternatives.co.uk/
and click through you will see that as they put it
“an independent response” badly cut and paste and guess who it is City Road Communications!!
Also it says Capital Alternatives are appealing.
Does anyone know exactly WHO is appealing, I thought it was African Land and Australian Carbon?

The new stuff on Capital Alternatives Ltd’s website is completely laughable (especially City Road Communications contribution – ummm, are we back at 1960’s Blue Peter – scissors and glue). All coming from a now headless company, with no director after Henstock did a runner last month and the other one misteriously got hit by a train last spring.
There was a small publication which was pretty well identical in FT online adviser, but most of the quotes are from Capital Alternatives and the judges comments on other aspects which came out in the proceedings, have been conveniently missed out.
Capital Alternatives only communicate when it suits them, i.e: to sell products and to occasionally provide “updates” on products sold and always by telephone – they put as little in writing as possible.
Paul Quade and City Road Communications are obviously just members of the same gang given the report above. They reside (or did) in the same building as Crest Commodities and have been the apparent PR people for Capital Alternatives, African land, Capital Mining (the defunct version)in the past.

I visited Dashwood House yesterday. Got through security to the Capital Alternatives receptionist Lisa on plush offices on 17th floor. Was told everyone was in meetings and if I wanted to make an appointment I’d have to ring this number 02075628347.
I left a message with the lady who took my call for someone to call back about £54,000 invested in Room to Invest. A lady waiting in reception for an interview said: “did you know, you were talking on the phone to the lady who just gave you the number”. Suggest you give Lisa a call too!

I have been approached by a company called CBO Investment House of London who claim they can sell my carbon credits to the Taiwan Bank, the credits were for two projects in China, the companies that sold me these credits have now disappeared into the undergrowth.
Have you heard of this company at all.

I also visited Dashwood House – didn’t even bother to try to get through security. There was no sign of Capital Alternatives there. They probably pay a “receptionist” who works from home to answer calls.
I have called a few times to ask to speak to who is in charge and I am invited to “leave a message for someone to call back”………….the “girls” say they cannot give out any information (names: Lisa, Lindsay, Nicole, Stephanie, who don’t seem to have surnames) – don’t appear to know who their boss is!?
“Room to invest” went into liquidation around March 2010, yet Capital Alternatives continued to sell it as part of their “multi-asset growth portfolio” – “MAG PORTFOLIO”. They had various numbers for these portfolio’s, all claiming good returns. They included – wine (Capital Wine Ltd), gold (Capital Mint Ltd), and memorabilia (presumably Capital Memorabilia), and hotel rooms (Room to Invest Ltd) all were dissolved some considerable time back.

@Tom Arnott (#6) – CBO Investment House is a scam. They contacted you. No legitimate company would contact you. The company’s website provides no information about who is behind the firm. The website was only registered anonymously on 24 February 2014. There’s no sign on Open Corporates of any company registered with the name CBO Investment House. The FCA registration number that the company gives on its website (471125) belongs to Christian Bernd Otten – he’s regulated in Germany for Insurance Mediation or Reinsurance Mediation.

Following our telephone conversation earlier today, please find in the signature below our company contact details. For further information on the services we have to offer at Bernd Otten Invest please visit our website http://www.berndotteninvest.com

As requested please could you reply to this email with the details of your carbon holdings to enable us to find out if we can help you exit your holdings and also what offer price we can obtain for you. The minimum information we require is the project id and/or project description along with the amount of credits you hold.

If you hold any other investments you would like to exit such as overseas restricted shares or overseas Initial Public Offering (IPO) shares then please also send the full details of these holdings to us. We will then look into these investments and find out if we can find a suitable exit strategy for these too.

I look forward to receiving your reply and will be in contact with you in due course to give you further information on our exit strategies but in the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact us should you need to.

The information transmitted in this email is intended solely for the person or entity to which it was addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, re-transmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking any action in reliance upon, this information

I called Lisa on 02075628347 and got Lindsey, she said she’d never heard of Capital Alternatives and gave me another fictitious company name as hers. I think we’d better start looking for the Directors of these companies- Capital Alternatives, Capital Carbon Credits, Reforestation Projects, Africa Land etc and posting their home addresses here, so as we can go visit them personally and “discuss” the situation regarding our investments. I’m into these scamsters for quite a lot of money and I’m not beyond world travel to “discuss” my investments.

Quade is a director of a new company Bitcoin Store Ltd, a company registered at the same building as Capital Alternatives.
I think we can expect some bitcoin “investment opportunities” to be hitting our mailboxes very soon.
Did he think this up or do we sense the involvement of Capital Alternatives people in this ?

Bitcoin – Been there, done that! Before anyone invests in Bitcoin I have a story to tell. I bought 10 Bitcoin at £7.00 each, by the time they were hacked and stolen from me they were worth £400.00 each. There are millions of computer Nerds and Hackers spending all their time “mining” for Bitcoin and they WILL get yours!

@baj – Sorry, your comment got stuck in the moderation queue. The website is down, so this is probably too late, but Bernd Otten Invest looks like the same scam as CBO Investment House (see comment above).

The website was registered in April 2014 – in the name of Chris Bernh Otten, with an address in Barcelona.

The FCA number is the same as CBO Investment House, and belongs to the real Christian Bernd Otten in Germany.

Received a cold call from Incrowd Equity (US number) giving an opportunity to buy shares into Bitcoin store, Unregulated and recipe for disaster for anyone parting with their money. No mention of Paul Quade when challenged to name the directors of Bitcoin. Looking forward to the next cold call opportunity – Metals, Australian property (mining town), Coloured diamonds, Forestry, Our Price, Bitcoin store….